Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Quinces

This recipe preserves quinces in sugar syrup, optionally colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Quince and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,444 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

To Preserve Quinces

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the quinces

  1. Wash and wipe the quinces.

  2. Peel and core them using a tin corer or a strong fork.

  3. Cut the quinces into quarters or round slices about ¾ inch thick. Remove any blemishes.

Make the syrup

  1. Place the parings, cores, and seeds in a preserving kettle. Cover with cold water and boil for 1 hour, keeping it covered.

  2. Add 1 pound of sugar per pint of liquid and dissolve it over heat. Bring the mixture to a boil and skim off the scum.

Cook and preserve

  1. Add the quinces. Boil them until they are red, tender, and clear, but not breaking, keeping the kettle covered.

  2. Add a little cochineal sifted through muslin to enhance color.

  3. Remove the quinces and spread them on large dishes to cool.

  4. Boil the syrup again until it resembles fine jelly. Pour the hot syrup over the quinces.

  5. Wait until cooled, then seal the jars with brandy paper.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Quince + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,444 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Quinces
Provide the fruit that softens and turns red and tender during long simmering.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled into syrup, helps it set into a clear, jelly-like coating.
Cold hard water
Forms the base of the syrup and, with the parings and cores, extracts pectin for setting.

The step that matters

Boil the quinces until tender but not breaking. Quinces are firm and need long, gentle simmering in covered syrup to soften and turn clear. Boiling too hard or too long breaks the fruit apart and makes it mushy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Quince JellyQuince Jelly131 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes